The thoughts and ruminations of a university chemistry and roleplaying geek

“You still here? Wanna hear more? Well why the fuck not? Buy me another drink and I’ll ramble a bit more. So most of us were originally ex-bikers, but a few like me were picked up for useful skills. I could fix bikes pretty well, a hobby I developed to give me a chance to work with my hands, again, due to that crap staring at computers all the damn time job I had.

Ahhh, that is the stuff… Anyway, it was the first spring after the fuckin’ demons ate the goddamn world. Petty warlords had started springing up all winter, and the orgy of crimes that had followed the gov’rment’s collapse started to coalesce into something more permanent. Slave caravans started to roam around. They grabbed the weak and helpless, often from rural areas, and dragged them down to more populated areas to sell. We were too big a group and too well armed for them to tangle with and vise versa. To tell the truth we were mostly concerned with our own hides. The winter had been hard, fucking hard, and we’d come far too close to dying to risk our necks fer strangers.

Until one day when I saw an old girlfriend of mine bein’ marched along in a chain. We’d been a horrible match and hadn’t gone out for more then a month before we split. Still, seein’ her there in that iron collar, known’ what would happen to her when she reached the city, if not before. I snapped. I had my gun up and shootin’ before I’d realized what I was doin’. It was a small caravan, less than a dozen guards. The shits had probably lost a bunch to some town that fought back. I had four of those on the ground with lead in them before anyone realized what was happening. The guards were more worried about the slaves rebelling and not paying attention so us. That gave my side a chance to figure out what was going on first and we cut them down. They fought back, but we had the momentum then an’ we only lost two guys- Big Bruce, our leader, and Viking, an ass that no one really liked anyway.

That led to a big power conflict as we figured out who to make the new leader. Half of them wanted to lynch me for startin’ a fight, the other half wanted to make me the new leader fer takin’ charge. Makin’ us feel like men again, instead of yellow cowards, runnin’ from everyone. What kept me from gettin’ strung up was the loot. Those shitsticks were loaded. Ammo, food, drugs, booze. They’d been killin’ and lootin’ and we got it all. So I was the new leader. I gathered everyone around, former slaves and bikers alike. I told ‘em that I was gonna ride outta here and keep doin’ this. Puttin’ lead in those that deserve it, them that rape and kill. Then we’d take their stuff and whoop it up! Most of the people were with me now- we’d not had this much food and fuel in months, but one yelled out that ‘the only place we’d ride was to hell.’ The name stuck fer some reason and when we rode out of there that night we were the Hellriders.